SERMON XIII. EZEK. xvi. 30. The work of an imperious whorish woman. Nor to chill your ears by keeping you long at the doors; not to detain you one minute with a cold unprofitable preface; this chapter is the exactest history of the spiritual estate of the Jews, i. e. "the elect of God," and the powerfulest exprobration of their sins, that all the writings under heaven can present to our eyes. From the first time I could think I understood any part of it, I have been confident that never any thing was set down more rhetorically, never more πáðos and vos, more "affection" and "sublimity of speech," ever concurred in any one writing of this quantity, either sacred or profane. It were a work for the solidest artist to observe distinctly every part of logic and rhetoric that lies concealed in this one chapter, and yet there is enough in the surface and outward dress of it, to affect the meanest understanding that will but read it. For our present purpose it will suffice to have observed, 1. That the natural sinful estate of the Jews, being premised in the five first verses; 2. The calling of them in this condition, in their pollutions, in their blood, and bestowing all manner of spiritual ornaments upon them, following in the next ten verses; the remainder is mostwhat spent in the upbraiding and aggravating their sins to them in a most elevated strain of reproof; and the axμǹ or “highest pitch" of it, is in the words of my text, "the work of an imperious whorish woman." For the handling of which words, I first beg two postulata to be granted and supposed, before my discourse, because I would not trouble you to hear them proved. I. That the elect chosen people of God, the Jews, were degenerate into heathen, desperate, devilish sinners. II. That what is literally spoken in aggravation of the Jews' sin, is as fully applicable to any other sinful people, with whom God hath entered covenant as He did with the Jews. And then the subject of my present discourse shall be this; that indulgence to sin in a Christian is the "work of an imperious whorish woman." And that, 1. Of "a woman," noting a great deal of weakness; and that not simple natural weakness, through a privation of all strength, but an acquired, sluggish weakness, by effeminate neglecting to make use of it. 2. Of "a whore," noting unfaithfulness and falseness to the husband. 3. Of "an imperious whore," noting insolency and an high pitch of contempt. And of these briefly and plainly; not to increase your knowledge, but to enliven and inflame the practical part of your souls; not to enrich your brains with new store, but to sink that which you have already down into your hearts. And first of the first, that indulgence to sin in a Christian is the work of " a woman ;" an effect and argument of an infinite deal of weakness, together with the nature and grounds of that weakness: "the work," &c. And this very thing, that it may be the more heeded, is emphatically noted three several times in this one verse. 1. "The work of a woman," in my text, a poor, cowardly, pusillanimous part that any body else, any one that had but the least spark of valour or manhood in him, would scorn to be guilty of, an argument of one that hath suffered all his parts and gifts to lie sluggish and unprofitable, and at last even quite perished by disusing. As the weakness of women, below men, proceeds not only from their constitution and temper, but from their course of life; not from want of natural strength, but of civil manlike exercise, which might stir up and discipline, and ripen that strength they have: for if their education were as warlike, and their strength by valiant undertaking so set out, viragos and amazons would be wellnigh as ordinary as soldiers. And so will the comparison hold of those womanish, sluggish, abusers of God's graces. Then in the first words of this verse, "How weak is thy heart!" noting it to be a degree of weakness below ordinary, |